


Rain Down, Rain Down (The Persistence of Memory Mix)

by cm (mumblemutter)



Series: The Persistence of Memory [1]
Category: Blade Runner (1982), Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Community: reel_startrek, M/M, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-14
Updated: 2009-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-03 02:56:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/pseuds/cm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A replicant and a blade runner walk into a bar. A Blade Runner/Star Trek hybrid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain Down, Rain Down (The Persistence of Memory Mix)

> "So a runaway replicant and a blade runner walk into a bar."
> 
> "Yes?"
> 
> "Uh. That's about as far as I got, in all honesty."
> 
> "That's good. Brilliant. You're hilarious."
> 
> "Thank you."

 

_chapter 1._

Some part of him, at least, expects it to be different outside of L.A. Elysian Fields and whatnot, and he exhales, not so much disappointed but resigned: the world is fucked up, and that's why people talk about leaving the city, but they never do in the end. They fly past polluted rivers, oceans and forests struggling for life, choked by the air. The desert threatens to reclaim them once more. Beside him, Jim sighs. "I can't believe you've not been out of the city before."

"And you have?" It comes out more snappish than he'd intended it to be. Sore spot: his ex always said he was like a turtle and L.A. was his shell. Which might have been true, but at least he knew what to expect there. No surprises, not like this. L.A. is a wasteland, but people don't leave, and so it keeps chugging on.

Jim doesn't respond though, and when McCoy turns to him he's slumped against the spinner door, scowling. "I had a horse," he says. "Not a real one, but close enough. There were fields. I got thrown off once and broke my arm in three places. Now that I think about it though, I don't have a scar from that."

McCoy grunts, but he can attest to that. Jim's skin is flawless, unlived in. Unlike his own.

"So where are we going again?"

"North."

Jim says, "Let's go East instead."

"East?"

"East."

"Okay."

*

They stop only when they need to rest, in shitty no-name towns that somehow survive, but only just. Dwindling in numbers as the wide-eyed children grow up and run to the nearest city in the hopes that they'll be better off there, not end up like their dead-eyed, overburdened parents. They were everywhere in L.A., runaways turning tricks or dealing, or if they were too stubborn and prideful, scrounging for food in dark alleyways. Half ended up dead. Homicide used to say the only dead body worth less than a skinjob was a drifter. He leaves the scanner on until they're out of range, then he sets the Esper to scan for the local police channel; Jim tries to switch it off once but McCoy shoos him away. "Do you find that comforting or something, dude? I understand, we all need our mental distractions, but perhaps some soothing meditation music instead of a constant barrage of incomprehensible codes might serve to make you less, uh. Antagonistic perhaps?"

McCoy _hrms_ and whistles through his teeth, distracted and flustered. He listens for NHI incidents, like he always does; the only time the blade runner division is ever on any police scanner anywhere. Clean-up crew at eleven. Mentally staking up numbers and decoding the stream thrown at him in that chipper, non-descript voice. He never did learn how to quit, even when he did.

"It's not - nevermind." He reaches out and viciously turns the volume down. "There, happy now?"

"Yeah, but I'd still enjoy that soothing meditation music if you could."

"Fuck you," McCoy says, and Jim claps his gloved hands gleefully together and turns his head to the window, to laugh.

*

_(You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go.  
It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity.  
At some time, every creature which lives must do so.  
It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work,  
the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.)_

*

They find a motel on the edge of what used to be San Francisco, and that's the last time McCoy actually recalls where he is at any given moment. Mostly the plan is working out so far, they drift inexorably Eastwards, avoid all highly populated areas with large numbers of blade runners, avoid the deadlands. Avoid dying, mostly. Jim has a curious predilection for candy; McCoy watches him bring back half the vending machine in chocolates and bon bons and grimaces. "You know these things'll kill you? They're synthetic garbage is what they are."

"Yeah, yeah. Here. Couldn't find sake. Brought you tequila instead. There might be a worm in the bottle, but I'm entirely sure it's dead." He tosses the brown bag onto the bed, and McCoy grabs gratefully at it. The glasses he finds in the cabinet are too filthy to even contemplate, so he ends up drinking from the rim of the bottle instead, wincing at the burn that goes down his throat.

"This is terrible, man. Are you trying to kill me?"

"It's the best they had - if you define best as being the most expensive."

"How much more expensive." Not that he's worried, especially now that the alcohol is taking effect.

"About a buck. Standards here are real high, as you can clearly see from our accommodations."

McCoy offers him the bottle, but Jim ignores his outstretched hand and leans close to him instead. His breath on McCoy's cheek smells like licorice and chocolate. Curiously rich. Maybe the crap's not so bad after all. He reaches out with his free hand but Jim moves easily out of reach, and when McCoy protests he presses his palms flat on McCoy's chest and pushes him down onto the bed. Straddles him, and his smile is twisted and surprisingly dark. "Say, kiss me."

"What -"

"Come on. Tell me you want me."

His hand in McCoy's hair is hard, and he pulls, exposes McCoy's throat, and now he can't breathe, because Spock hurt him more than he'll admit and there are parts of him still broken and unlikely to heal soon, because he's old and drunk and Jim is young and not, and when Jim lays kisses along his jaw, tiny and feather light, he growls, "Fuck you kid, this is not -" but Jim's mouth is on his before he can finish saying what he'll surely regret the second he says it. Hot, and hard, and McCoy says, "Fuck you," again, the second he can breathe again, but then Jim presses his body against him and McCoy shudders, and stops thinking about talking for a while.

*

"Went right through the bone," he tells Jim, when he asks, afterwards, about the arm. "Doc told me I was lucky they didn't have to saw the damn thing off - was in so much pain at some point I'd have welcomed it." Jim runs his fingers lightly across the scar, tracing layers of scar tissue where the wound had torn open and had to heal again because he had to go back to work and there was no fucking way some skinjob was gonna ruin the first job he'd ever been good at.

"Does it hurt," and he sounds curious, awe-filled, almost.

"No. Yeah - sometimes. Like a motherfucker."

"But them's the breaks, right?"

And now his eyes are hooded, and McCoy says, "Me or them, most of the time." As if he'd had no choice. "I was just doing my job."

"Whatever, man."

 

> "Why East?"
> 
> "What do you mean?"
> 
> "Why East? Why not North, or West, or. Why New York?"

 

_chapter 2._

The first runner that comes after them is a huge brick of a man that McCoy's heard of before but not met named Lloyd - McCoy barely misses a shot aimed at his head and he's dragging a wide-eyed Jim along going "Get down. Stay behind me. Stay behind me." Running up a flight of stairs in a burnt out building, and it's not quite as disorienting as he thought it would be, being chased rather than being the chaser. Mostly the rules remain the same: stay alive. It's mostly luck though, in this case, because a couple of shots and he hears the distinct whine of the gun powering down, running on empty and then not. So McCoy rushes him instead, and they fly, out through broken glass windows and down below. They struggle, briefly, on the ground, and then it's over, and Jim is pulling him up, asking urgently, "Are you okay? Hey man, you there?"

McCoy squints at him, because there's blood in his eyes and he's unsure how that got there to begin with, until Jim says, "You're bleeding," and pushes his hair back, and McCoy sways, dizzy, suddenly, but Jim has his arm around him and he's saying, "I gotcha, I gotcha. Come on." He's surprisingly strong, and McCoy is entirely sure he'll fall down if he ever lets go.

They bury him nearby, in an empty field nearby that has probably seen more than its fair share of bodies - Jim does most of the digging, drags the body over while McCoy pulls glass shards out of his palms and tries not to throw up.

"Should we say something?" Jim asks hesitantly at one point, and he looks incredibly young and yet somehow _old_ at the same time, and McCoy just spreads his palms wide instead of answering him, and he says, "Okay then. Okay."

"We can stay the night," he tells Jim afterwards, when they're back in the relative safety of the motel room. Jim runs a hot bath for them and helps him undress. In the tub, he patiently pulls whatever glass is left out of McCoy's skin and lets each one fall, carelessly, onto the towel on the floor. "Take a day or two for them to figure out he's gone. We got that at least." The water's turning pink, and Jim fusses, but McCoy just tells him, "It's fine, headwounds just bleed a lot is all. I need a fucking drink, mostly."

"Later, okay? When I'm sure you won't bleed out." He pauses. "Was he your first?"

"Yeah."

"Is it the same?"

"Do you want me to say yes?"

Jim only pulls another shard from his forearm, and says, "I think I've got them all. I think you're okay." McCoy kisses him then, wraps his palm around his neck and pulls him near, but after a while he just drifts, and when he lets go he slides down and lets the water wash over him.

*

Jim says, "Show me," and McCoy shakes his head, no. "I'm not a child." Which, McCoy points out, quite correctly, he is, which earns him a sour look and a blow that he avoids easily enough. He grabs the fist aimed at him and slams his slight frame against the wall, arm pressed up high against his back. Teeth grit, "Look kid, this isn't fun and games - it never gets easier and you never want the place it leads you to."

"Do me a favor and leave my mental health to me," is the stubborn reply, and McCoy sighs and lets go.

"I gotta show you how to hold a gun first. You're a fucking lightweight, is what you are."

They go into the city that night - for weapons and false IDs, just in case. McCoy has one or two contacts that he's never met and is ninety percent sure will turn on them, but give them a head start first at least. Everything in Spanish, and McCoy mutters at one point, "Doesn't anyone speak English anymore?" but trade and currency is the same everywhere and soon enough they're directed to a building on the edge of Animoid Row; Jim stops and has an animated conversation with a proprietor selling rats, reluctantly dragging himself away only when McCoy glares impatiently at him long enough. Up a steep flight of stairs, McCoy says, "When did you learn how to speak -"

"I just do."

"Good. You can do the bargaining then. I'll make sure we don't get our throats slit."

The girl that's sitting behind the desk is a tiny, bespectacled thing in pigtails down to her waist. "5-0." She eyes McCoy disdainfully. "What do you want." Bored, but in perfect English at least, as the muscle pats them down. Jim flashes his smile at her, and her expression sours even more. "Another dumbass gringo, great," she mutters under her breath, and McCoy decides he likes her already. "Ammo I can do," she says, when he tells her what he wants. "IDs, no problem. I don't do offworld transport. Only idealists or suiciders go there. You got your own chasing after you - must be you done something bad." She waves her hand, _none of my business and don't tell me since I don't care_.

He buys more weapons and ammo than he needs, including a BHG that he keeps and a more compact blaster that he hands silently to Jim afterwards, "That's just a gun," he says. "That don't keep you alive, you understand that?" Jim nods his head solemnly, and McCoy's not sure he gets it at first, but you learn or you die, is how it goes. The first time always, somehow, a fluke. One second you're trying to stay alive and the next moment someone else is dead, and it's hard, even, to co-relate the two in your brain even though one action naturally precedes the other. Jim never mentions Scott - crazy motherfucking skinjob, impossibly strong and impossibly deadly, but he was just another skinjob on the run too, just like Jim is now.

The second runner they send after them, Jim shoots in the hand and the head, right as he's aiming his gun at McCoy, pistolwhipped and down on the ground. McCoy's still winded when Jim pulls him up with one gloved hand, and his smile is brittle and bright. "Do we bury this one too," he says, and McCoy wants to push him away but in the end he just shrugs.

"Do what you want," he says, and Jim kisses him then, hard and needy and teeth filled with the taste of copper. This is how it feels, to be alive. And living in fear, somehow, you get used to that too.

"He had a shot at you," he tells Jim afterwards, when he remembers, when he's going through it in his head, preparing for the next time. "He didn't take it. Aimed at me instead. I think they want you alive."

"What the fuck for?"

"I don't know."

*

"I remember once," Jim says suddenly, "I drove my stepfather's car off a bridge. There was sun, and wide open spaces." He frowns, then. "I guess it must not have been Earth then." And he falls silent, and what he means is: I guess it must not have been me, then.

"Memories are tricky," is all McCoy has to say, because he's never been good at this shit. His own memories are twisted and spacey - dispersed with brief moments of sharp clarity: his first lay (a girl he'd never called again because he was a teenager and a fool), joining the Academy because his parents had kicked him out and he'd had nowhere else to go (_Chances of you surviving the first year out on the streets are almost nil. Sign here, please._ The recruitment officer with the scar heavy across half her face never once uttered the words "blade runner" though, he'd probably been psych-evalued for it from the beginning), getting married and subsequently getting divorced to the woman he thought he'd loved, fallen for the first time, the birth of his daughter, her cry thin and reedy. Jim. Always, Jim. His face on the vid line, _Why don't you come down here, have a drink? - I don't think so, Mr. McCoy. That's not my kind of place._ But he came anyway, in his expensive suit and even more expensive coat that looked so real it had to be. Only the best toys for Pike's best toys.

"It's all bullshit anyway," he says finally, because he's not seen his ex-wife in years and he doesn't know his daughter's number, and he's got nothing except his gun to remind him of who he once was, and he'd never questioned whether his own memories are real or not, but what the fuck did it matter either way. "We are who we are -"

"Because of what we were."

"No. Fuck that. There's only here and now, and you and I. Fuck everything else."

So maybe that's good enough.

*

Sixty bucks buys you a room, eighty the "honeymoon suite" with all its tacky, faded red plush bed and mirrored ceiling. A hundred, if you ask the right questions, buys you a skinjob - "Nexus Five, but they got all their parts, yeah? Way better than the Nexus Four. Know you're there, if you get what I mean." McCoy is about to smack him one, but Jim says quietly, "I'll pay the hundred," and on the expression on his face, McCoy knows well enough to shut up.

The Nexus Five is tiny, blonde and on the edge of preternaturally pretty. She stares blankly into space, collar around her pale throat, and doesn't blink when Jim waves his hand in front of her face, or when he snaps his fingers near her ears. "No one's home, Jim," McCoy says, stating the obvious, but then with Jim some things he just doesn't get. "Think she was built that way - or being turned out made her like this."

"I don't know - why don't we go ask the owner of this illegal replicant what she was Really Like deep down in her delicate soul when he bought her from the traders - no doubt for a steal because the Nexus Five were the ones that uprised. Didn't like being told what to do."

Jim's smile is brittle. "So I've heard."

"And what of the Nexus Six."

"Designed to be better than them - more compliant."

"Yeah, fat lot of good that did - look what a pain in the ass you are." He's grumbling, and he knows it, but he doesn't care. He wants the girl gone, wants to be alone with Jim in this horrid motel where they can leave the lights on because it's still better than L.A. - because everything is better than L.A. Would enjoy a blowjob at some point - he's too exhausted for anything more right now. Maybe a fucking drink. And a smoke. Definitely a smoke. "Are we quite done yet, Jim?" It's a command, but he doesn't care.

Jim bristles, but then, surprisingly, he gives. Slips some credits into the girl's palm and kisses her cheek. Her flinch is involuntary, but then she stills, and Jim says, "Go."

*

_(All things come alike to all:  
there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked;  
to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean;  
to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not:  
as is the good, so is the sinner)_

*

In the spinner, Jim thumbs through the photos he'd left in the glove. Scott's, mostly. He pauses on the blown up picture of Chekov, face impossibly young and pale in the bathtub. "Who is he?"

"Nobody. Replicant."

"Is he dead?" What he means is: Did you kill him?

"Yes." What he means is: I'm sorry.

"He looks like a child."

"Designed for assassination. Counter-intelligence and infiltration. Stop looking at those."

"No."

*

The further off the grid they go, the worse it gets. Towns are either fallen into anarchy or populated by ghosts who rarely venture outside, depending on whether PikeCorp has an interest in it or not. Jim peers through the blinds of their room in one such town - there's a boy outside who's been wailing for the past half an hour without stopping. "We should go help. He might be injured. Dying."

McCoy briefly looks up from cleaning his gun. "No," he says, with finality, and returns back to his task. It's only the rustle of Jim putting on his coat that alerts him. He manages to catch him right as he's opening the door, and he slams it back shut. "Best not get involved, Jim."

"Get out of my way."

"He's dead already."

"You don't know that."

"I know a death rattle when I hear one. Besides, I'm not a damned doctor. What could we possibly do to help?"

Jim's face is steel-hard, but his voice is gentle when he says, "We can try," and McCoy's so surprised that he doesn't react fast enough when he's shoved out of the way.

"Fuck," he says, and gets his spare gun out. "Fuck fuck fuck, _fuck_." Outside, it's cold as a witch's tit and he can't see a goddamned thing, so he heads in the direction of the wail. Cautiously, until he hears the distinct whine of a weapons discharge, and then he starts to run. Heart pounding and mouth dry, it's not far but the darkness is disorienting, makes it seem that way until he almost bumps into Jim, standing still over a body. McCoy exhales, "Are you okay, are you hurt?" His hands all over Jim, searching for wounds, but Jim shrugs him off.

"I'm fine, for fuck's sake. I just-" He gestures at the body, and McCoy's eyes adjust well enough to see his head is blown wide open. "He was already dead. I just - couldn't take him screaming like that."

"Come on, Jim. We gotta go back in. It's not safe out here." There are monsters in the parasol, demons in their heads.

"How many does this make?"

"You mean - two. Only two. Three if you count Scott."

"Do you ever lose track?"

"No," McCoy says, and he slides his free hand into Jim's. "At some point, it's just better if you don't."

 

> "Are you out of your replicant mind?"
> 
> "It's too damned late in any case. We're almost there."
> 
> "Under false pretenses. This cannot end well. Jim, Jim. You don't know these kinds of people. He is not our friend."
> 
> "I don't need a friend."
> 
> "Then what do you need?"
> 
> "Answers."

 

_chapter 3._

Somewhere near the East Coast they find a doctor that, rumor has it, can save or extend the lives of replicants. He's in a hovel deep underground, so off the grid even McCoy can't find him easily, has to break more than a few heads to find his address.

"Come on, Bones," Jim says easily, flashing that lazy grin of his. "We don't have to. There's a hotel down the road that I'm told is reminiscent of an old Parisian whorehouse, and the runners don't have our scent just yet - I always wanted to fuck in a whorehouse, you know. Look, I've now revealed a deep secret desire of mine, or the dude whose memories I have, whatever. My point."

"Is that you want to die?"

Which wipes the smile off of his face, and he shrugs but only says flatly, "I'm alive now. So are you."

But four years is not enough. Or three. Or two. Or one. He had access to all of Jim's files, except for the one that mattered.

"I want you to live," he says finally, and Jim regards him for a while, and then nods his head. "Yeah, okay. Underground we go."

Deep into sewers and tunnels, there's off the grid and then there's Off The Grid, Jim buys something from a vendor who claims that it's "real rat burrito, real rat!" and at McCoy's grimace he beams and takes a huge bite and says, "It's real rat!"

"Is it?"

"No, probably not. Tasty enough though."

Two hours later and they're peering at an old man in a make-shift lab, muttering fitfully at the girl in his dentist's chair - "I'm not a magician, I can't fix this shit. You two, take a number. Out." McCoy points his gun at his head. "Okay, you can stay. You come back later, eh?"

The girl glares at them both as she gets up. Her entire right arm is a barely recognizable mass of bleeding tissue and bone, McCoy notices distractedly, but then she's gone, and McCoy lowers his gun.

"There ain't no cure." Is the first thing the man says to them, after spewing off an incomprehensible stream of Spanish at the assistant that had let them both in, until she rolls her eyes and flees. McCoy raises his gun once more. "Fuck that," he spits, and never has a wizened old man looked so vicious. "He's gonna die, asshole."

Jim rolls his eyes. "Well, this was fun. Got any more exciting adventures up your sleeves, Bones? Maybe a voodoo doctor that can tell me when exactly I will die, to the day. Although I'm pretty sure that's filed away somewhere on some PikeCorp server."

"Shut up," McCoy says, not turning away from the old man. "I went through a lot of trouble to find you. You'll help us, or I'll guarantee you die before he does."

Turns out that he actually can't. Even upon threat of death. For all definitions of "help." There are drugs to slow the process, but there are side effects.

"What side effects."

"Bleeding, schizophrenia. The usual stuff, man."

"Sure, the usual stuff," McCoy says flatly. He's put his gun back by now, but he wishes he still had it out - he'd shoot the smug fuck right then and there.

"Pike. Motherfucker was a genius. Recombinant DNA. Irreversible." He rattles off a whole bunch of stuff that McCoy is surprised he still understands. "The Nexus Six," he says finally. "Sweet. Designed to be perfect. But nothing perfect lives. So you're shit out of luck."

McCoy wants to snap at him, but in the end he just tosses money on the man's workbench. "It's good," he says, to the suspicious glare, and takes the pills. Just in case.

*

Nyota looked like a broken-down doll when she fell - even more so when she finally bled out. He'd always had utter faith before, that everyone he'd retired was a skinjob, but the runners he put down now, they died exactly the same. Which means one of two things, or one of an infinite number of things, neither of which he cares to speculate on, not when Jim's wrapping his legs around his waist and pulling him close, whispering sweet, hot, nasty things into his ear.

"Baby," McCoy says, and Jim laughs, deep and throaty, and says, "Yeah."

*

_(Besides men, we know of no particular thing in nature  
in whose mind we may rejoice, and whom we can associate  
with ourselves in friendship or any sort of fellowship;  
therefore, whatsoever there be in nature besides man,  
a regard for our advantage does not call on us to preserve,  
but to preserve or destroy according to its various capabilities,  
and to adapt to our use as best we may.)_

*

Sulu finds them, ironically, just when they'd started to feel a little safe. Safe being relative, but no-one trying to kill them for a week is cause for celebration in McCoy's mind. Not that he lets his guard down, so when he spots the little origami plane in front of the service apartment they'd rented for the week, he draws his gun, and puts his finger to his lips. Jim nods his head, mouth tight, and draws his own weapon. But Sulu, he's just sitting there, under the dim light of a lamp, playing with little squares of paper.

"You not an easy man to find, Mc-Coy," says, and his eyes are diamond blue and cat-like and McCoy wonders, as he always does, how much the man paid for them - and why. He'd heard rumors, about how an escaped pleasure model had dug them out with his fingers. The same one that gave him his limp and put him behind the desk, more or less. Until now, it would seem.

"First of all, If you think I'll not blow your fucking brains out, I've killed men I liked far more than I do you." McCoy says. "Second of all, glad to see you made yourself comfortable with our alcohol."

Sulu's smile is whipcord thin. "'S good stuff. Man's gotta drink, ya."

Jim says, "Isn't this the part where someone - and by someone I mean you, starts dying?" He sounds confused, and when Jim gets confused, bad things tend to happen.

"Simmer down, boy," Sulu says, and McCoy nods his head, sharp. Disengage. Jim scowls and throws himself into the nearest chair, gun dangling loosely from his hand. "Fine, I'll let you fine gentlemen work things out. I'll just sit here as if I'm not the one he's been sent to 'retire'."

Sulu puts his finished origami on the table. It's a turtle. McCoy blinks. "Everybody dies, maricon. You the blade, he the runner. Me - I just the clean-up crew. They said, you're the best. I said no, that was McCoy, 'fore he got his dick wrapped round some pretty young skinjob - I remember, got someone else's memories."

"Go fuck yourself," McCoy says, but his heart's not in it. Every sense heightened, he knows, without looking, Jim has tightened the grip on his gun.

"Hesitate, and you lose, blade." Sulu starts to laugh, genuine amusement, and McCoy breathes in deep. Engage.

*

General consensus was that he'd retired because he'd burnt out - it happened all the time, even to the best of them. And he was. Only it was more that he'd gotten bored. Sick of it all, and sick of the idea that his luck would run out and he'd end up getting shanked by some terrified skinjob with half the skills but twice the determination to live. Or perhaps he was just scared that he'd gotten to the point where he couldn't quite bring himself to care either way.

Jim never asked about how many skinjobs he'd retired and how often he'd found himself hanging perilously from ledges. The answers were, respectively: too many, and not often enough. Mostly he doesn't think about it - practices running instead, away from instead of towards, and that's new. He doesn't get the shakes anymore.

In a bar, looking for someone who knows someone who can get them offworld, downing shot after shot of tequila in between emptying the "complimentary" guacamole and chips the bartender dumped sullenly in front of him. Too many years of raw fish and noodles and now his stomach can't get used to all the spice and red meat - Jim adjusts fine, for some reason, but McCoy has some faint hope that New York will be exactly like L.A.

Jim is playing pool, and charming the pants off of every girl that comes into the place, but he's looking to hustle, not get laid. "Fifty bucks, sure. Sure. Not convinced of our skill - I understand." Lazy, cocksure smile, with the girlfriend of the hustlee lowering her head and smiling at him. The bartender shakes his head and leans in close.

"He yours?"

"Unfortunately."

"Tell him he break the furniture - it belongs to him. Not cheap."

"No hay cuidado," McCoy tries, and the man rolls his eyes and wanders off, muttering. You're a fucking idiot is easily translatable in every language, it would seem.

Two broken tables and a chair later - McCoy pays, because he's nothing if not paranoid, like all cops are, and they can't freeze bank accounts they don't know you have, he's dragging Jim out and leaning him up against the spinner. "You're a stupid, dumb fuck," he hisses, but Jim only laughs, and braces his hands against the door so he can push up against McCoy. His body hot, and wanting, and McCoy is instantly hard.

"Just having some fun, Bones. I can't remember where I learned how to play pool, you know. Must have been him. Do you remember watching me play pool? My leg broke and I had all summer to learn." And McCoy knows the memory, sure, but he shakes his head, kisses Jim instead. Hot and sweet and wet, and his blood tastes like blood everywhere. Of McCoy's own, when some skinjob's busted his lip or cracked his cheek open. Nothing but memories of blood and pain and always, of someone dying.

"Jim," he says, and he pulls away, cups Jim's face between his hands and leans his forehead until they're both pressed together. "Jim, I got it. I got the number." And Jim stills.

*

Offworld was always the plan. Or his plan at least. Jim's are trickier, and for the most part McCoy ignores them even as they slouch steadily forwards, compartmentalization being another thing most runners are good at, and what he's especially good at. But you can't not bring the work home, is what he found out a long time ago. Not just the shakes, or the blood and bruises, or even the drinking. There were blade runners that went rogue, that were quietly given pensions and shipped offworld to their colony of choice. Started killing humans. Scum, for sure, most of them, rapists and murderers and whatnot. The guy upstairs that won't stop banging on the floor at three am. Some smart-ass called it the Voight-Kampff Syndrome: the inability to discriminate between the value of a human life versus the value of a skinjob. McCoy never quite got that far. The only person he ever wanted to kill was himself, and he never had the stomach for that, either. "A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies," he mutters, but Jim shakes his head, skeptical.

"Aren't you worried? There might be more of us out there than you."

"I'm sure I'll live somehow."

The smile on Jim's face is strangely flat, off-kilter. "There's a change coming. I feel it. Not just here."

"Nothing ever changes, Jim. I gotta make the call, okay?" He's unsure now. And as to why he feels he's asking for permission. Jim's eyes are hooded, unreadable, but he says nothing.

*

_(If we lived forever, if the dews of Adashino never vanished,  
if the crematory smoke on Toribeyama never faded, men would  
hardly feel the pity of things. The beauty of life is in its impermanence.  
Man lives the longest of all living things... and even one year  
lived peacefully seems very long. Yet for such as love the world,  
a thousand years would fade like the dream of one night.)_

*

The last shit town they end up in, before they hit the city proper. It's raining, the kind of hard and furious rain that turns the entire landscape gray and promises you'll be sick by sunrise unless you get the fuck out of it, pronto, and McCoy starts running, but halfway through he realizes there are no footsteps besides him. Jim's just standing there next to the spinner, frozen still. McCoy gives up any hope of not ending up as drenched as a fucking sea rat, walks back.

"Usually people want out of the rain, not in, Jim. Come on," he says, and winces when he jams his hands into his coat pockets to find them as wet inside as they are out.

"You don't understand, do you?" His hair plastered to his forehead and he lifts his face up, closes his eyes against the rain pouring down - "I don't want to be human. I don't need the past of James T. Kirk - I'm stronger, faster, better than he is." He finally, then, looks at McCoy, and his eyes are as blue as they've ever been. As human as they've ever been. "You asked me once if I loved you, if I wanted you. I ask you the same. James Kirk isn't that far away. He'd want you too, this I know."

"How do you know what's you and what's him?"

"I don't. Isn't that the shit of it?"

"Come out of the rain, Jim."

Jim grins. "You're wet too, Bones. You'll far more likely catch a cold than me."

"Probably." He was never one of those people that did sick though. Fifteen years on the force and not a sick day that didn't involve someone sticking a bullet or a knife in him. _You're like a fucking machine, McCoy,_ Byrant used to say. _Better not let PikeCorp find out, they'd clone you and make a thousand little McCoys, put you to work in assassination or mining colonies. Like one of you's not more than enough._

He's wet and cold, and his clothes are heavy with water, and when Jim saunters slowly towards him, McCoy can't help thinking that maybe this is how it'll always be between them. "Who are you," he says, and Jim opens his mouth, and then something hits him, soft, in the belly, so soft he feels it only as an exhalation of breath, and it all goes to hell.

*

"It's only a graze - you'll live." Jim probes at his stomach, and McCoy feebly pushes him away. He knows he'll live. He's been through worse. Jim holds three bloodstained fingers up. Points to the left, beyond the edge. They're crouching behind a burnt out car, still warm from being set aflame and sizzling slightly from the rain pounding on it. "We can take them, no problem." He nods his head grimly in agreement, steadies himself so he can push up. One, two, three. Steady as she goes, blade runners going down like bowling pins. He shoots the last one straight between the eyes, she sees him as he walks right at her, aims, and her eyes, he notes, are the same faded shade of green as his ex's. She goes down heavy, and McCoy kneels, closes her eyes even as the blood blooms down her face and everything fades.

Jim pours alcohol on the wound afterwards, and stitches it up the old-fashioned way: with needle and a thread, his hand barely shaking. McCoy chugs down whiskey and mumbles, aimlessly, mostly to hear his own thoughts out loud. "All that muscle for one skinjob and one dumbass blade-runner."

"Hm?"

"Nothing. Nothing important. Are you done?"

"Yeah I'm done." Jim smacks him lightly on the ass and says, "Get some sleep. I'll keep watch."

"No, I'll do it." But he's already slipping away, even as Jim drags a chair over to the window, binoculars in one hand, gun in the other, and he thinks Jim is saying something but none of the words make sense, so he just lets the sound wash over him as he slides.

 

> "Did you use me, just to get us here? Because you needed someone to help?"
> 
> "Oh fuck you. We all use people. It's the nature of what we are."
> 
> "It's not the same."
> 
> "Right, I forgot. Your feelings and motivations are human. Mine are just. Errors in programming."

 

_chapter 4._

"You will reach your required destination of New York City in approximately twelve hours and fifteen minutes, following current speed and holding patterns," the Esper cheerfully tells him when he enters the spinner and punches the numbers in.

McCoy mutters irritably at it, and bangs on the screen for good measure when it won't shut up.

"Come on now," Jim says. "Don't be that way towards Irene. She's only doing her best."

"You named my car?"

"Of course I named your car. You need to be more affectionate towards your machines, Bones. Treat them as if they're worthy of love, as if they're human, and they will cherish you for it. See how well it works for us reps."

"Like talking to your plants, right?"

"Yes, see. Now you're getting it."

"My plants always died," McCoy says.

"You had real plants?"

"No." He shifts heavily in his seat and says, "Come on. We gotta book. Irene will get cranky if we don't."

*

_(It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to  
pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time,  
you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust,  
none of which had ever been alive  
but all of which had once been you.)_

*

Spock opens the door, and McCoy hisses through his teeth and puts his hand on his gun, but Spock just raises one perfect brow. "There's no need for that, Gentlemen. Mr. Kirk is otherwise occupied, but I have it on good accord he'll be along presently."

The hallway they're in is huge, made almost cavernous due to almost every surface being a bright, eye-hurting white peppered with spots of color and chrome. McCoy jams his hands into his pockets and is prepared to wait, but instead a door slides open and the man known as James T. Kirk strides out. There's an owl perched on his gloved arm, and he says easily, "Sorry to make you wait, guys, but I gotta let her fly every morning or she gets antsy."

Jim cocks his head. "She's designed to need flight?"

"Well, if you think nature is a design, then yes."

"She's real?"

"Of course." He says this casually, offhandedly. Merely a statement of fact. "Good girl." He rubs the owl on her head and feeds her a sunflower seed. "She was a gift from PikeCorp." Jim steps forward, almost dreamily, and the gaze Kirk lays on him is dark, curious. "That's an excellent likeness. I remember Chris mentioning to me, his experiment -"

"Jim is not a fucking experiment," McCoy spits out, involuntarily, despite himself.

Kirk's smile fades, but only a little. "Of course not." Behind him, Spock leans against the counter and crosses his arms. His face is blank, serene, almost identical to the way he - his doppelganger, looked, right before he died. "Does he bother you, Detective McCoy?"

"Considering the last time I saw him he was trying to send me to meet my maker, no, not at all."

"I apologize then, but his presence is. Necessary. Unless - " Spock moves suddenly, and he beckons towards Jim.

"How about I show you around the compound." McCoy is about to veto this, divide and conquer, no way, but Jim is already shrugging, bless his stupid reckless head. He nods almost imperceptibly at McCoy as he passes by, but McCoy stubbornly refuses to let go of his scowl until they're out of the room.

"You put us all at risk, coming here. Surely you're aware of that," Kirk says, after offering McCoy a drink that he only pretends to decline at first. His voice is steely, and suddenly he's Jim, McCoy's Jim, stubborn and beautiful and demanding that the world bend to his will. And the world, mostly, bending freely. Or out of sheer exhaustion at the prospect at doing otherwise.

"You could have turned us away."

"Possibly. Curiosity. They keep informing me it'll kill me. Doesn't seem to have sunk in so far."

"Yeah, well." He gulps the drink down and mutters, entirely to himself. "Not my fucking idea. Like a fucking force of nature. Fuck."

"Leonard," Kirk says, and his hand on McCoy's face is warm, callused the way Jim's isn't, but otherwise exactly the same. "I can't call off the dogs, if that's what you're hoping for."

"Why?" And he can't breathe. Can't move. Jim is somewhere, with Spock, fascinated by him the way he's fascinated by all replicants. Nexus Six, just like him. Only there's no-one exactly like him. Except the man running his thumb, whisper light, across his cheek, and then Kirk laughs, and just like that, it's over, and McCoy exhales. "We're going offworld. You'll never see us again."

"Okay," Kirk says. "Funny, I thought you were here to kill me." He shrugs. "The rep- Jim, he's not just a Nexus Six. He's the Nexus Six. He's the prototype for the Nexus Seven. The only one, and now that Pike is dead, they'll have to start over. You're talking billions of credits of research. No-one really knew what he was until they tried to replicate it and couldn't."

"That's not my fucking problem."

"He's PikeCorp property. They want him back."

"I saw you, over there, as a kid, learning how to play the piano. You drove your teacher crazy, always asking questions. Then you hit puberty and tried to sleep with her."

Kirk smiles again, leans back against the couch. "She was hot, what can I say. Managed to hit that, too. Did you watch that as well?"

"I might have skimmed. Too much infodump - sixteen years is a lot of memories in real time - why'd you say yes to begin with."

"Because Pike asked, and you don't say no to Pike." He grimaces. "I always thought it creepy, my memories in someone else, but I didn't realize that someone else would have my face too. I'm not your enemy, you know."

"Everyone's my enemy."

"Stay though, for the night at least. I won't stop you when you choose to leave."

McCoy wants to retort, "As if you could," but Spock is probably just nearby, and his fingers haven't fully recovered yet, and he's not ready for round two, especially not with one that's not this close to dying. "Attack ships on fire off the coast of Orion," he mumbles instead, and at Kirk's raised brow he shakes his head wearily. "Nothing, nothing at all." But that Spock, at least, had a choice on who to love.

"I think maybe I'll go find Jim," he says finally, because the air is oppressive and tight and James T. Kirk's eyes are ridiculously fucking blue, and he didn't sign up for any of this shit. Not then, and not now.

"Of course. I have some work to finish, but I hope you'll join me for supper."

"Sure, sure. Why not?"

*

He finds Spock, finally, leaning against a balcony. This place is a mirage, almost, all bright lights and clean lines. Even the pollution don't seem to stick here, McCoy breathes in deep and all he gets is clean air. "He's not with me," Spock says, without turning around, and just like that McCoy is on a wet and dizzy roof, watching him die, for hours and hours. "But you're not here for him. You're here because you think you know me."

"Yeah - no. Fuck, I don't know anything anymore. You died."

"By your hand?"

"Nah, just time. Time and PikeCorp."

"Irreversible atrophy. Happens to all of us. Even you, Mr. McCoy." Spock turns, finally, and clasps his hands behind his back. "Goodnight, sir. Please enjoy the amenities provided to you. You are, after all, our guest."

"Ours?"

Something flickers in those dark eyes, but then it's gone. "If you'll excuse me."

"Sure. You're excused." He doesn't step aside though, just turns his body as Spock passes him by, face rigid and set. And flawless. A diamond, smoothed and polished to absolute perfection. Or almost perfect - if only he'd had someone else's memories.

"Oh, and you'll find him with Mr. Kirk, where I left him."

They're in what he assumes is Kirk's office, sharing a bottle of whiskey and laughing like old friends, and it's only because McCoy knows Jim so well that he knows he's not entirely comfortable, not entirely relaxed. But then again, probably no-one knows Jim better than the man sitting next to him, so. Again: what the fuck does he know. Jim rises when McCoy raises a brow. "I'll let you get back to work, Mr. Kirk."

"Sure, sure. And I'd ask you to call me Jim, but it might get a bit confusing, no?"

Jim's chuckle is strained, but at least he tries.

"You know the way to the guest quarters?"

"Spock showed me. We'll be fine."

*

_(listen to me, i know what's going to happen to you. you don't  
need a window, you need a fire escape, you'll need a skylight  
to get to where you're going. i can't tell you where. and you  
dream that you are hollow and you dream that you are whole  
reconstruct what you remember and it comes out in pieces.)_

*

"Maybe we skip supper though," McCoy says, when he's had a hot shower and feels vaguely human again.

"Maybe." Jim's wrapped in a bathrobe and sprawled flat on the bed. "I mostly just want to sleep in any case."

McCoy sits heavily next to him and says, "Remember that piano?"

Jim smiles sleepily. "Remember the teacher more. Ms. Rodriquez, I think that was her name? It took me two months to get her to let me fingerfuck her on that bench. Another two before she allowed me to slide her skirt up and fuck her - she used to wear ridiculously long and tight skirts, I never understood them, they were so impractical, but fuck they were hot."

"I think we should leave. Just - fuck all this. There's a shuttle tonight. Mars colony. Guy said we pay, we ship. Do you know if there's a way out that they won't figure out we've gone?"

"Yes, of course I do," Jim says, and he finally opens his eyes.

*

McCoy flies them out of the city, fast as the legal limit goes, and Jim bundles himself up in his coat and slouches defensively against the door, doesn't say a word. "What," he snaps finally because he can't take it anymore.

"Nothing."

"No, come on. We came all the way here because you insisted that -"

"Shut up, okay?" Jim says wearily. McCoy grits his teeth and clenches his fingers against the steering wheel, but after a while Jim continues, soft and halting. "I thought maybe if I saw him, somehow. Maybe it would all make sense. Or. I don't know, man. He's still him, and I'm still just. A copy. A pale imitation without any purpose beyond being an...experiment." He exhales quietly, and shakes his head. "I just thought somehow something would change."

McCoy loosens his grip on the steering wheel and says, "Nothing ever does."

_end._

**Author's Note:**

> **Quotes:**  
> \- _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_, Philip K. Dick  
> \- [Ecclesiastes](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%209:2&version=KJV) 9:2  
> \- _Ethics_, Spinoza  
> \- _Essays in Idleness_, Yoshida Kenkō  
> \- _A Short History of Nearly Everything_, Bill Bryson  
> \- [You Are Never Ready](http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoets/901745.html), Nicole Blackman


End file.
